Active Lives Children & Young People Survey


In December 2018, Sport England published the first set of results from the 2017/18 academic year of the Active Lives Children & Young People Survey. These results are based on responses from over 130,000 children aged 5-16 in England, including around 1000 in Wiltshire & Swindon. The survey is the largest ever of its kind and gives comprehensive insight into how children in England are taking part in sport and physical activity, both in and out of school.


In April 2019, the attitudinal results from the same survey were published. Headlines from both data releases are outlined below. You can find the full findings on the Sport England website (www.sportengland.org/ activeliveschildren).


Levels of activity


Around 3 million children (43.3%) lead active lives, however of that group, only 1.2 million (17.5%) are meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines of more than 60 minutes of activity a day, every day of the week. The survey also found that a third of children (more than 2.3 million) are less active, meaning they do fewer than 30 minutes of physical activity a day.


Government guidelines set out that children and young people should get 30 minutes of their daily physical activity through the school day and 30 minutes outside of school. The survey data shows that 28% of children and young people do 30 minutes or more every day at school, while 22% do so outside school. Only 14% of children achieve 30 minutes or more of daily physical activity both in and out of school.


The survey found significant differences in the activity levels between boys and girls. At all age groups, boys are more likely to be active than girls. This gap widens from Years 5-6 as age increases.


Girls from Asian and black backgrounds are even more likely to be less active.


Survey results show that there is a clear correlation between family affluence and activity levels- children from highly affluent families more active than medium affluence, who are more active than low affluence.


Attitudinal results


The questions in this section of the survey related to the five aspects of physical literacy in relation to their levels of activity, mental wellbeing, resilience and social trust. Physical literacy is a combination of a person’s enjoyment, confidence, competence (how easy they find it), understanding (that it is beneficial) and knowledge (knowing how to get involved and improve).


The key findings are as follows:


Physically literate children do twice as much activity. The more of the five elements of physical literacy - enjoyment, confidence, competence, understanding and knowledge - children have, the more active they are.Enjoyment is the biggest driver of activity levels.Children who have all five elements of physically literacy report higher levels of happiness, are more trusting of other children, and report higher levels of resilience (continuing to try if you find something difficult).


Physical literacy decreases with age. As children grow older, they report lower levels of enjoyment, confidence, competence, and understanding. This is in line with the behavioural findings which show activity levels drop around Years 9-11.There are important inequalities that must be tackled. Girls are less likely to say they enjoy or feel confident about doing sport and physical activity. Children from the least affluent families are less likely to enjoy activity than those from the most affluent families. Black children are more physically literate than other ethnic groups – driven by boys, but they’re less active than the population as a whole.


In response to the survey results, Chief Executive of Sport England, Tim Hollingsworth, is calling for everyone involved in a child’s activity level to ensure that enjoyment is at the heart


of anything they do. He said “This is a critical moment for all of society to better understand what will motivate young people to get active. This survey gives us the richest evidence yet that sport and physical activity for children needs to be fun and enjoyable above all. The fact that a third of children aren’t nearly as active as they need to be, demonstrates we need to do things differently if we want to build a generation of young people who want to take part in physical activity as children and into adulthood. With previous research showing that active children have better levels of attendance and achievement, we must prioritise physical literacy with the same vigour that we address numeracy and literacy. Doing so could not only help teaching and learning outcomes, it could be hugely beneficial for the physical and mental health of our children.”


2 Wiltshire and Swindon Relay


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